***sonadora***

LittleDucky

Congrats and welcome to the December board!  I saw in your siggy that you are a lawyer.  I'm a 2L.  If you have a minute at some point, do you mind if I pick your brain a bit on how to handle being a pregnant summer associate this summer?  I'm wondering how it will be and whether I should tell people at the firm I'm pg, especially since I might be showing a bit by the end of July when my program ends.

Anyways - I'd love to get some perspective from ladies in the legal profession.  Thanks in advance!

Sonadora

Hey! Thanks!

Sure, I'd be happy to chat with you about it!

My best suggestion would actually be to keep it mum unless you need to tell them because you are obviously showing...if this is your first pg, there's a good chance you won't show until around 20 weeks or even later, so you might be able to cover it up. With the economy the way it is, I wouldn't want (even though it's clearly not legal) to give any hint of a reason why they shouldn't make you an offer at the end of the summer. 

I am currently a government attorney, so I'm not dealing with that (though I don't intend to tell work for a long time either for reasons related to a promotion that could evaporate) but I am still convinced that years ago when I got to the final round to be hired at a firm for after 3L (I did volunteer work after 2L) that I didn't get the job because I was about to get married and they thought I would leave immediately to have children. One of the partners even asked me about my plans to have kids!!!

LittleDucky

Ugh, I know.  In this economy I don't need to give them any reason to think I'll be less committed to my work than the 24-year-old who went straight to law school from college and is not married and not having a baby and able to devote every waking minute to the firm.

My concern though is that even if I do manage to keep it a secret during the summer, if I get an offer in August or September I'll have to tell them then anyway because I am planning on graduating at least a semester late (so in Dec 2011 instead of May 2011, and taking the Feb bar instead of July).  I could just ask to defer my offer to March of 2011 from whatever start date they gave me (probably September 2011) but I'm not sure if then they'd be upset because I'd been hiding something so big for such a long time, YKWIM?  I guess I'm just a little conflicted about that.  But maybe they'll like the idea of me deferring myself since they wouldn't have to pay me until later!

DH and I decided to TTC now because we knew we wanted to have kids and we didn't want to wait until I'd been at a firm for a couple of years "proving myself" before we started trying, and we decided that we wouldn't put our family on hold for career, especially since I might not get an offer anyway (last summer my firm gave offers to 2 out of 5 summers).  But it does make things more complicated now!